The following discussion of the background to the invention is intended to facilitate an understanding of the present invention only. It should be appreciated that the discussion is not an acknowledgement or admission that any of the material referred to was published, known or part of the common general knowledge of the person skilled in the art in any jurisdiction as at the priority date of the invention.
Communication may take place between mobile device users without answering an audio call. An example of such subtle communication takes the form of a missed call, where a sender's call is dropped before the recipient can pick up the audio call. Typically, the parties involving in such subtle communication already have a predetermined agreement for one party to ring the other and hang-up after a certain number of rings. To the parties, the missed call would convey a clear message (e.g. indication that one party has arrived at the meeting place). A missed call could also be employed to simply check if the other party is online, much like an Internet ‘ping’. The missed call could also be used to call the attention of the other, as when one is inviting the other to initiate a (and thus get charged for the) call.
However, such subtle communication may be misunderstood and is generally ambiguous.
As an alternative to audio calls, a more overt form of communication takes the form of SMS. However, costs are generally incurred and there is a constraint of 160 characters per SMS text message. Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) extends the core SMS (Short Message Service) capability by allowing non-text content to be added to the message, such as pictures, audio or audio-visual content.
While providing an enhanced user experience over the SMS, both SMS and MMS require the recipient of the SMS/MMS to manipulate his mobile device (usually via pressing some buttons on the mobile device) in order to be able to view/hear the MMS message. Another disadvantage associated with an MMS message is the repeated delivery of payload every time an MMS message is sent.
Further, most mobile networks provide for caller identification (caller ID) on the display of the recipient's mobile device. This requires the recipient to be in close proximity of the mobile device before being able to read the caller. ID. There have been improvements to caller ID system which audibly alerts the call recipient to the nature of the incoming call—i.e. audio caller ID system. Such audio caller ID system generally includes a speech synthesizer configured to identify a name and/or number of the calling party displayed on the recipient's caller ID display.
Other caller identification method works by customization of ring tones depending on the caller. However, the ringtone is triggered by a call and hence is part of the call establishment process. In addition, audio or ringtone are generally mapped to a caller and such mapping could be unique, hence caller identification is achieved. However, such ringtones is generally assigned by the recipient to the caller. There is at present no system for the caller being able to cause a particular ringtone to be activated on the recipient's device.
The present invention seeks to alleviate or reduce the above mentioned drawbacks.